I have completed 34 plays and one novel.
My plays have been produced in the
USA, Australia, and Canada.
My plays have been produced in the
USA, Australia, and Canada.
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Novel
Click for the Kindle e-book. Click for the Nook e-book. Also available in print at River Oaks Books in Houston. 713 520-0061 |
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The smell of oil is in the air, and so is murder, when eighteen-year-old Eddie Tipton arrives in a small texas town with his widowed mother in 1950. Eddie and his teacher mother take rooms in the home of texas oil widow, Faye Ruth Collier. Eddie spends time with handyman Ned Cotton and soon learns that Mrs. Collier's late husband was murdered a few years earlier. Ned cotton warns Eddie to stay away from Faye Ruth and to ignore the murder of Lawrence Collier. Eddie, of course, cannot resist.
Making his way in a new school, dodging the stigma of being the schoolteacher's son and succumbing to the lure of his middle-aged landlady, Eddie is embroiled in dangerous adventures on all fronts. He is befriended by two classmates, Hillyer and Lon, and engages these two smart boys to help him unravel the mystery of Lawrence Collier's murder. Also, Eddie falls in love with a bright young student named Reenie Fontenot. And then, Eddie suffers a devastating loss, causing him to ratchet up his investigation and leading to a near fatal showdown. |
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Stage Plays
THE LOVE SEAT
3 males, 3 females, one setting. The Love Seat is a fast-paced comedy with lots of physical action, gags, and four busy doors. Each time a character sits on a certain love seat, he or she falls madly in love with the nearest person. Next thing you know a bewitched rug and a naughty lamp add crazy complications. Plenty of romance, mixed up couples and mad magic. Does Junie truly see a Quadraped? Will scary Mrs. Castleberry show up? It all ends with the cast dancing “impulsively” to Bossa Nova music throughout curtain call. Two females, three males, one setting, two acts. |
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FUNNY THING ABOUT GHOSTS
Cast: 9 or 10: 5 m, 3 w, 1 or 2 flexible What do you get when you put a married couple, a butler, an evil owner of an estate, a local spiritualist, and five ghosts in a mansion overnight? Kenny and Janelle are a determined couple, willing to spend the night in the haunted Gottlieb Mansion to become the new owners. Consuela Gottlieb has other plans, while the ghosts are just trying to get the key to their spirit home. With a group hug at the end, this witty comedy is sure to keep the audience laughing. For scripts and rights: http://www.histage.com/onstage.asp?pid=2559 |
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A Noir Comedy in Two Acts Click for the Kindle e-book. NEWS: Curve is one of six new plays chosen for Dayton Playhouse's Future Fest. The festival of plays will be held over a three-day weekend of productions and talk-backs in July. |
In this witty, provocative play about truth and illusion, unrelenting rain pours down outside the Connecticut home of Dakin Abernathy. Inside, Dakin and his neighbor, Ted Mueller, engage in a verbal joust where nothing is as it seems. Or is it?
Dakin, a noted film noir director, accuses Ted of having killed his own wife. In fact, Dakin, produces a severed woman’s thumb as evidence. Ted protests, yet as morning spins into afternoon and a thunderous evening, he begins to believe that he might, indeed, be a murderer.
But something about Dakin’s manner suggests that he could just be riffing on one his film noir plots. Dakin’s wife, Angela, complicates events with her flaky personality and suicidal tendencies. Their daughter, Lana Veronica, comes home for the weekend saying she is in trouble with the law. Then again, Lana Veronica likes to tell lies. Dakin and Ted play cat and mouse over murder, breaking and entering and the very nature of fact and fiction. Events escalate and secrets are revealed until the play itself suggests a film noir, complete with dark music, ominous lighting and swirling fog.
Two men, two women. Two acts.
Dakin, a noted film noir director, accuses Ted of having killed his own wife. In fact, Dakin, produces a severed woman’s thumb as evidence. Ted protests, yet as morning spins into afternoon and a thunderous evening, he begins to believe that he might, indeed, be a murderer.
But something about Dakin’s manner suggests that he could just be riffing on one his film noir plots. Dakin’s wife, Angela, complicates events with her flaky personality and suicidal tendencies. Their daughter, Lana Veronica, comes home for the weekend saying she is in trouble with the law. Then again, Lana Veronica likes to tell lies. Dakin and Ted play cat and mouse over murder, breaking and entering and the very nature of fact and fiction. Events escalate and secrets are revealed until the play itself suggests a film noir, complete with dark music, ominous lighting and swirling fog.
Two men, two women. Two acts.
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A dramatic comedy in two acts. |
When searching for the next great painting, you stumble across a lot of secrets.
A beautiful and unpredictable new play about a young art student, Danny Boudreaux, and his summer apprenticeship with renowned artist, Mina Davenport. Danny's plan is to improve his technique through Mina’s tutelage and enter the league of fine artists. But Mina has given up art and is living a Bohemian life in her cabin in the Connecticut woods with houseguests: Father Beau, a defrocked priest, and a runaway teen, Pim. Danny is surprised at Mina’s lifestyle and by her thorny and uncooperative attitude. They clash, and soon Danny sees that Mina’s methods of mentorship require him to uncover the secrets of his own life and to help her complete her next painting.
The play is stylized and calls for an arrangement of scenic elements suggesting several locations: New York City, Mina’s studio in Connecticut and other places, both today and yesterday. Shifts in lighting move the story from place to place, time to time.
Four men, three women. Two acts.
A beautiful and unpredictable new play about a young art student, Danny Boudreaux, and his summer apprenticeship with renowned artist, Mina Davenport. Danny's plan is to improve his technique through Mina’s tutelage and enter the league of fine artists. But Mina has given up art and is living a Bohemian life in her cabin in the Connecticut woods with houseguests: Father Beau, a defrocked priest, and a runaway teen, Pim. Danny is surprised at Mina’s lifestyle and by her thorny and uncooperative attitude. They clash, and soon Danny sees that Mina’s methods of mentorship require him to uncover the secrets of his own life and to help her complete her next painting.
The play is stylized and calls for an arrangement of scenic elements suggesting several locations: New York City, Mina’s studio in Connecticut and other places, both today and yesterday. Shifts in lighting move the story from place to place, time to time.
Four men, three women. Two acts.
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A New Comedy in Two Acts |
A new comedy about dysfunction, insecurity and the middle age crazies.
Four college pals, now forty, show up uninvited at the Napa Valley cabin of their old professor, Lonny Winkler, now retired. Kevin struggling with a gambling debt, searches for gold Kruggerands, which he believes are hidden at the cottage. Lacy is apprehensive about her upcoming presentation and resents Kevin’s flirtation with Ellen who yearns for a singing career, and Philip has just been dumped by his fiance. Lonny’s girlfriend, Neva, dispenses wisdom but things quickly get out of control when Philip brandishes a pistol he has brought because: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Howling coyotes near the cabin have everyone on edge and then Philip comes up with a big idea – that they recreate their old college production of HMS Pinafore. Suddenly the lights go off and a helicopter buzzes from above. Anger and insecurities abound and soon the weekend is in jeopardy. Philip collapses from stress and Ellen decides to run away to Nashville.
As night closes in, the group comes back together just in time for a surprise ending.
Three men, three women. Two acts, a single setting.
Four college pals, now forty, show up uninvited at the Napa Valley cabin of their old professor, Lonny Winkler, now retired. Kevin struggling with a gambling debt, searches for gold Kruggerands, which he believes are hidden at the cottage. Lacy is apprehensive about her upcoming presentation and resents Kevin’s flirtation with Ellen who yearns for a singing career, and Philip has just been dumped by his fiance. Lonny’s girlfriend, Neva, dispenses wisdom but things quickly get out of control when Philip brandishes a pistol he has brought because: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Howling coyotes near the cabin have everyone on edge and then Philip comes up with a big idea – that they recreate their old college production of HMS Pinafore. Suddenly the lights go off and a helicopter buzzes from above. Anger and insecurities abound and soon the weekend is in jeopardy. Philip collapses from stress and Ellen decides to run away to Nashville.
As night closes in, the group comes back together just in time for a surprise ending.
Three men, three women. Two acts, a single setting.
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Babbling Brook at Goose Run A Dizzy Farce in Two Acts |
Alex and Benny, try to sell a new house but the day of the showing goes badly when no one shows up to see the place. If the boys fail, agency owner, Mrs. Fern-Neville Berryman, threatens to “insert wasps into their ears and pour scalding oil down their pants.”
Two young women, the agency’s “Support Team Assistant Deputy Associate,” Amy, and florist, Miriam, add romance and complications. The two girls are a bit coo-coo – Amy gets psychic readings from paper towels and Miriam wishes to: “jump from a bridge with her feet tied to a bungee cord, plunging down and down until she hits bottom and breaks her nose.” Burglar Ned adds craziness to the day and handy man, Chuck, tries to impress with his many bird impressions.
In a desperate attempt to create a bidding war, Zack and Benny invite celebrity: Prince Cassimer Vershun of Tarrs Fibia to view the house. When the prince fails to show, Ned decides to impersonate him. Then (you guessed it) the actual prince arrives. Events escalate, characters dash in and out doors, a snake gets loose in the house and, of course, an “unloaded” opera pistol goes off shooting Chuck in the leg. Mistaken identities abound, romantic confusion rules, and running seems the order of the day. It’s a mad, crazy, funny romp and, yep, it all works out in the end.
Three women, five men, two acts.
Two young women, the agency’s “Support Team Assistant Deputy Associate,” Amy, and florist, Miriam, add romance and complications. The two girls are a bit coo-coo – Amy gets psychic readings from paper towels and Miriam wishes to: “jump from a bridge with her feet tied to a bungee cord, plunging down and down until she hits bottom and breaks her nose.” Burglar Ned adds craziness to the day and handy man, Chuck, tries to impress with his many bird impressions.
In a desperate attempt to create a bidding war, Zack and Benny invite celebrity: Prince Cassimer Vershun of Tarrs Fibia to view the house. When the prince fails to show, Ned decides to impersonate him. Then (you guessed it) the actual prince arrives. Events escalate, characters dash in and out doors, a snake gets loose in the house and, of course, an “unloaded” opera pistol goes off shooting Chuck in the leg. Mistaken identities abound, romantic confusion rules, and running seems the order of the day. It’s a mad, crazy, funny romp and, yep, it all works out in the end.
Three women, five men, two acts.
